100 LPs Shortlist #43: Fleetwood Mac - "Tusk"

Since when is an album selling 3 million copies considered a flop?
Even then, since when is a Fleetwood Mac album, by the classic lineup considered a flop?

Well, the reasoning goes a little like this:

1. This album is a double album, which (in those days) was significantly more expensive than a standard album. Plus the fact it has a lot of music to digest, at a hefty 20 songs and 75 minutes long
2. Its release follows immediately on the heels of what fans and critics alike consider an unimpeachable album, the 10+ million selling "Rumours" in 1977.
3. When that album is called "Tusk".

By the time this record was in the process of being conceived, the band were in turmoil. The two couples in the band had split up were at each others' throats. They were consuming copious amounts of cocaine, and that was just for breakfast. As a result, things were all a bit nuts.

In amongst all this drug-induced lunacy, Lindsay Buckingham asserted himself as the de facto leader of the band. He hated touring, but loved the studio, so this was his place to dominate. He had been listening to a lot of punk and new wave music during this period and decided that, after "Rumours", the 'Mac were one of the "dinosaur" bands the British punk bands were hellbent on eradicating. He wanted to change the band's sound to appear relevant again.

What you end up with, after 10 months in the studio and well over $1 million spent, is a record that sounds neither new wave, nor punk, nor overly Fleetwood Mac like. And after the one-two punch of 1975's "Fleetwood Mac" and its mega-selling 1977 follow-up, the first impression most people get is that this record is weird. Really weird. All the songs on the record, including the sublime Christine McVie ballad moments and pop gems of Stevie Nicks, are given oddball arrangements and other tweaks to suit Lindsay's twisted paranoiac vision. About half the album is devoted to Lindsay's sonic experiments, many of which sounded like rewrites of "Never Going Back Again" (i.e. "The Ledge") but with new, strange sounding instrumentation.

Such a brave (or stupid, depending on your viewpoint) risk resulted in the lowest selling album since their newfound fame in 1975. Sure it sold 3 million, but in comparison to "Rumours"' then 10+ million, this was considered a failure. If you were looking to get "Rumours Volume 2" with this album, as many people probably were, you were sorely mistaken.

However, it is precisely because of the fact that it is not a rehash of past glories that this album succeeds. There are many slow burning gems on this record that have mostly been forgotten. However many of the band's best ever songs are within the grooves of these two LPs.

Probably the album's most daring and unique single is one of Lindsay's aforementioned sonic experiments. The title track "Tusk" features a marching band, heavy tribal drums and almost no discernible lyrics. Equally fascinating are Lindsay's "That's All For Everyone", "That's Enough For Me", "Save Me A Place", "What Makes You Think You're The One", "I Know I'm Not Wrong" and the stellar "The Ledge".

The album's oddness may even be cemented by the fact that it opens with a ballad ("Over and Over"), as opposed to a barnstorming opener on the previous few records. It subsequently ebbs and flows between Lindsay's short, sharp and concise noisy pounding, sublime gorgeousness from Stevie ("Storms", "Sara", "Sisters of the Moon"), and soulful crooning from Christine ("Never Forget", "Honey Hi"). The pace is relentless until the slow burning side 4 starts (track 16 for CD and streaming listeners).

The jewel in the crown of the album however is the largely forgotten single "Think About Me" which, for my money, is one of the best things Christine ever composed. Despite having an incongruously-placed guitar solo it is a perfect pop song, with a soaring chorus some fat crunchy guitars.

Despite the dubious influences of the album, once the dust settled (pun intended) we are left with an album that stands on its own as a unique piece of work unto itself. It could use a spot of editing (what double record doesn't?) but this album is perfect in the way that the Beatles' "White Album" is - it is an album that dared to be different regardless of the consequences. It is bold and uncompromising, and it ultimately succeeds despite the odds suggesting it would fail. It creates a world of its own to get immersed into, and subsequently welcomes you back into time and time again.

I came to this album after hearing "Rumours" as a high school student in 1993, and to this day it still inspires me.

Take a listen again below on Spotify.

Film soundtracks?

What difference does a film's soundtrack make? Do you actually notice the music in a film?

Having recently upgraded our television to a "bigger than Ben Hur" sized model, we've been watching more movies than usual. I noticed with recent films we've watched, like "RIPD", that there was a notorious lack of music through it, whether it be a bold idiosyncratic orchestral score, or a well chosen set of tunes from popular music (along with a lack of any other redeeming features as well). Even "The Fast And The Furious" has a soundtrack where all the songs sound identical to each other, and none of which make any impact or do much to enhance a scene.

And yet, in the kids movies we are often forced to endure, the music is often well chosen and perfectly suited to a scene. Even in films like "We Bought A Zoo", the scene where the zoo looked like being foreclosed on without a large capital injection was perfectly soundtracked by "Hunger Strike" by Temple of the Dog. It's a great song on its own, but it lifts the scene in the film over and above the level of ordinary.

Last night's film on DVD was "Walking With Dinosaurs". It's a good, fun CGI romp through the pre-historic world (with a loose plot), but the use of well-chosen songs makes certain scenes stand out. For example, there is nothing particularly magical about the two main characters losing their herd and having to hide within another herd of animals heading south for the winter. Throw in Fleetwood Mac's drum-heavy track "Tusk" as a soundtrack and you have something special.



The use of Lord Huron's "Ends of the Earth" magnifies the power of the aurora borialis scenes in the middle of a slow point in the film.



What films have songs in key scenes that elevate the emotions for you? Let us know in the comments below.

Dio, Deep Purple, Dodgers and Bach

What do Ronnie James Dio, The LA Dodgers and Bach have in common?

At first glance, not a heck of a lot. But even the most tenuous link between them can be worth exploring, as there is a lot of relevance to kids of a certain age.

You see, each of these songs was played during the Children's television timeslot on the ABC, circa 1978-1979, as fillers between programs. As the ABC doesn't show commercials (except promos for its own programs), and as some programs were of odd lengths, gaps would appear in the schedule. And what better to fill them with than some cool music and, just maybe, influence a generation of youngsters into digging something more musically interesting? These days, the ABC does similar, but it fills the gaps with kiddie crap like The Wiggles, tailor-made for kids, whereas in the late 70s, there wasn't much of that kind of stuff.

The three songs shown below certainly were interesting, even if the vids themselves were not necessarily all that entertaining (Fleetwood Mac, I'm looking at you). They may have played more than these three songs, but these are the ones I remember most from that period. Each song holds up well under musicological scrutiny, and one would find there is much to learn from each track here should they wish to delve deeper.

1: "Love is All" - Roger Glover and Friends.

I was discussing this song with some friends over dinner the other night and they admitted they'd never heard it before. How could you not know the happiest song ever written? In fact, if this is NOT the happiest song ever written, please tell me so I can shut up about it.

As a song, it has an odd lineage. It was designed as a project for Jon Lord, keyboard player for Deep Purple. He didn't have time to fulfill the project so he handed it over to Roger Glover, who had not long left Deep Purple. He enlisted a whole heap of musos for the album, some of whom were more renowned for their much heavier music than this. He enlisted (then-)current members of Deep Purple (Glenn Hughes, David Coverdale), ex-members of the Spencer Davis Group, and various session musos who were doing the rounds at the time (Liza Strike and Barry St John sang on "Dark Side Of The Moon" for example).

The album relates to the various members of the forest who have all been invited to a grand feast and ball. This track is the "party" song, where all the characters make their way to the ballroom and have a great night. The artwork (and animation in the video) is extremely brightly coloured and endlessly detailed. The song itself is one of three on the album that feature the vocals of one Ronnie James Dio, who was about to make a big splash as the vocalist in a band with another former ex-Deep Purple member, Richie Blackmore's Rainbow.

The album and single on its original release in 1974 didn't really do much, but the ABC played it frequently in 1978-79 and it started selling and became a top 10 Australian hit at the time.



2. "Tusk" - Fleetwood Mac

We all know how successful Fleetwood Mac were in the late 1970s. The album "Rumours" went stratospheric, and they needed to come up with a suitable followup to capitalise on their momentum. The resulting LP was Tusk, and the title track was one of the lead singles from the album. It's one of the strangest and most ambitious albums ever made by a major label artist, but its musical adventurousness is what makes it fascinating.

The Song itself was based around a riff that guitarist Lindsay Buckingham bashed out during soundcheck at gigs. They took the riff, added copious amounts of tribal drumming along with a handful of pithy, mumbled lyrics and a marching band and there you go. Recipe for a classic hit? Hardly. If nothing else, it demonstrates the condition of a rock musicians cocaine-addled mind in the late 1970s.

The video was filmed in an empty Dodgers Stadium in LA with the University of S. California Trojan Marching Band. In fact the footage looks like a montage of bits from the cutting room floor that were spliced together to make a clip. Hell, one member of the band was absent, so he appeared in the clip in the form of a cardboard cutout.



3. "Tocatta" - Sky

Here is another great song that was played regularly during this period. I think these sorts of tracks were chosen not necessarily because they were populist, but because they held broader appeal than, say, the B52s. Then, as now, this is a chilling piece of music. Bach really knew how to conjure up a dark mood, and while he did it many times I think he did it best with "Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor", from which this piece is drawn. Sky were amazing, and so was John Williams, who played the electric acoustic on this track.

Sunday Sessions: The Mavis's

There are many bands that evoke certain memories of a certain time of my life gone by. Those bands would be tied to their era, corresponding with my stage of development during that period.

Today's band to be honoured with a Sunday session I discovered during their peak. They, like many other great local and overseas bands of the time, were the soundtrack to a very confusing and unique period of my life: early adulthood. Their music reminds me of tertiary study, moving out of home, first steps into the metropolitan Sydney rental market, first jobs with multinational IT companies, buying new cars off the showroom floor and securing finance on credit, and much, much more.

Today we give a rousing introduction to The Mavis's.

I didn't like them at first, however (rural Victoria) Ballarat's finest (and most probably, only) pop stars wormed their way into my consciousness, and they have never left. At first I couldn't work out just what the hell I was seeing and listening to, but as the music becomes almost permanent earworms, I just had to give in to its charm. Listening back to their music now elicits powerful emotions of happiness, joy, sadness and bittersweet melancholy, all at once. It is amazingly evocative music by a group of unlikely misfits from disparate musical and cultural influences, but somehow they made it all work.

If one was to try and identify their influences (and even that would only uncover a very haphazard selection), you could pinpoint Fleetwood Mac, Husker Du, The Beach Boys, The Velvet Underground, the B52s - an unusual texture from an unusual group. They had heavy guitars, pounding drums, sweet vocal harmonies and lusciously rich melodies all colliding together into a kaleidoscopic whole, performed by a be-dreadlocked guitarist, an icy, indie-cool bass player, a female drummer who alternated between shades of delicacy and full throttle belting, an openly gay male lead singer and his moon-pixie sister, also on vocals.

They were of their time and simultaneously from somewhere else. They were at once contradictory and yet the perfect combination of divergent ideas. They didn't look like any of their other peers at the time, but then in the mid-1990s, Aussie bands didn't look like each other. And trust me, one look at the videos below and "cookie-cutter" is one term that definitely does not apply to The Mavis's. Behold the 80s style synths and soaring vocal lines in "Cry", Eastern influenced melodies and hardcore punk guitar riffing in "Naughty Boy", clever harmonies set against heavy metal riffing in "Box" and more.

Here's six of the best from many, many greats from their catalog. Enjoy.